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SA2B Hunting
Initially, when I was going to start this series, I thought Hunting would be the easiest character type to cover. Mechs aren’t all that complicated, but they’re also the character I’m least confident with my knowledge in generally. I don’t work on Tails or Eggman stages often. Knuckles and Rouge used to have a simple sort of ‘checklist’ of things to test when looking for optimizations. Their speed values have constants, for example, punching and gliding both have speed limits, so it’s fairly easy to know when you should or shouldn’t be doing one of those actions. Often movement would be linear, running as much the stage allows, and using the same set of tricks in whatever the situation allowed. I’m going to start this video covering these basics, though some more recent discoveries and optimizations have more or less changed the way hunting characters play in a TAS. I’ll cover those after going over the more general movement options. Gliding and Climbing Glide Breaking So starting off very simple, there’s glide breaking. When you jump in Sonic Adventure 2, you have something we call hover, the ability to slow descent or jump higher by holding A. With other characters, hover can only be reset with a jump, but with Hunting characters, it can be reset by initiating a glide. Hunting characters have 60 frames of hover, and by canceling a glide with a drill dive and starting a new glide, you reset hover and falling speed. Chaining this can allow you to descend much slower than a standard glide. Quick Climb Quick climbing is a technique which allows Hunting characters to immediately be mobile when grabbing onto a wall to start climbing, skipping the __ frame animation of grabbing onto the wall. It’s performed by releasing A _ or _ frames before grabbing a wall after a glide. Corner Climbing Corner climbing is exactly what it sounds like, climbing in the corner of two walls. It only works in acute corners, and causes Knuckles to ascend at a speed of 1.1315 rather than .8 (the projection of the vector). This is most useful climbing upwards, but it works downward as well. Stand-Still Acceleration AABB (separate this into pause and non-pause) (maybe diggable surface too) The inputs “A,A,B,B” from stand-still are still the fastest way to build momentum, at least, if you’re on flat ground without any objects around. There isn’t an official name to this style of movement (something which will likely be the case for many things covered in this video and series) so I had to come up with one while writing this script. Essentially the goal of this trick is to have enough speed to perform the fast punch, rather than the standing punch. AABB does the actions Jump>Glide>Drill>Punch. The important aspect here is the glide, even gliding for one frame will give enough speed to fast punch. (Which is _.__ or more speed). There are variations of AABB inputs, the biggest being if you have the digging upgrade and are on diggable ground. In this case, you need to jump considerably higher such that the drill dive doesn’t initiate a dig. These lose _ frames in comparison to not having dig, and the specific inputs are _______. A work around for this, and introduction to a universal tech, is to use pause to initiate a button press 2 frames in a row. I’ll go into this tech in more detail when I make a video covering shared techniques between the characters, but I won’t gloss over it too much here. It might sound strange to an average viewer to hear that pressing a button 2 frames in a row requires a trick. The thing is, that under normal circumstances, pressing a button 2 frames in a row would equate to holding it. As you’ve never released the button.If you were to press a button on a controller 60 times per second, it would be read by a 60FPS game as simply holding the button. The pause allows you to press the A on the frame you pause, and also on the frame you unpause. This costs 1(2?) frames to perform, (but on those frames the ingame clock isn’t moving). A pause jump with hunting characters actually keep them grounded, the glide initiates so fast they don’t go airborne. Therefore, this variation of the AABB method doesn’t use a drill dive to land, you simply jump, glide, and then punch. Unfortunately, when you load into a stage in this game, the pause button is actually disabled for the first 1.65 seconds. If you have dig, spawn on digable ground, and want to build momentum as fast as possible, you’ll have to use the higher jump method. (Or if you’re doing an IL, you can restart the stage, as the inability to pause only happens on first loading into the stage). In addition to all this, a glide can be used for a similar reason: to have enough speed to fast punch, after surfacing from a dig. If you press A immediately as you come out of the ground, you can land instantly with enough speed to punch. Pieces Layout Generation (RNG) RNG in Sonic Adventure 2 can be influenced by many things, such as: calling on the RNG to determine something on different frames, starting levels at different frames, almost any sort of change in character movement, what objects are loaded as well as when they loaded, several several other things, and also (the risk free and most easily manipulatable) where the camera is located. In-stage RNG manipulation is almost exclusively done in TASes by changing the camera location. It’s the easiest way to affect what items you dig up, or what piece/pieces will spawn after an in-stage death on missions 1 or 4. Rotating the camera with L or R is not going to make any optimization compensations, such as digging different frames, or moving differently before hitting a death plane to reset a stage with desired pieces. You can simply move the camera for 1 frame in one direction, over and over once a dig is initiated, but before the item is determined, or once a death is initiated, but before fadeout. Each time the camera moves, the RNG will change, and the outcome alongside it. Personally my method of doing this is to turn the camera and savestate each frame, and then load each savestate without turning the camera, or holding holding any buttons, and see if I got the desired result. This way I can quickly test in sets of 8 or 10, depending on how many saveslots I’m willing to save over. Spiral Upper / Screw Kick Drill Dive Disposition On the edges of ledges, it is occasionally possible to drill drive and be repositioned forwards, saving approximately 1 frame. AMm3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZzookvPL_Q MH-Hero https://youtu.be/bB3L1-C2Rrw?t=1275 Standy Landy Landing from a drill dive without analog input puts you in a standing animation rather than a running one, but you maintain the momentum you had upon landing. This allows hunting characters to perform standing actions (such as grounded dig, whistle, mystic melody, or treasure scope/sunglasses) while moving. Examples of this being used are to cancel the mystic melody animation by sliding into the ghost in Egg Quarters mission 3, activating the treasure scrope sooner on Security Hall mission 3, and sliding into the Chaos enemy in Mad Space m3 to skip the mystic melody animation. Hunting Specific Moving Object Abuse - Clipping Methods Hint Monitors Hint Monitors can be used to clip out of bounds if they’re near a wall and ceiling in such a way that jumping up from behind them would push you into the wall, and then past the ceiling. This needs to be done with neutral stick if you’re jumping to prevent clipping back inbounds. It can also be done with a spiral upper or screw kick. AM DL Touch Clip Touch clipping is something which can be done on the majority of touches in Death Chamber and Egg Quarters. If you jump at the exact center of the touch and grab the wall, you’ll be pushed behind the wall, where you can then dismount and be out of bounds. I don’t know why this trick works, and there are a few touches it doesn’t work on. It’s very precise position wise, and not something which can be consistently done non-TAS. If you’re not directly in the center, instead of being pushed through the wall, you’ll be pushed left or right and remain inbounds. DC-Hero https://youtu.be/bB3L1-C2Rrw?t=1042 EQm5 GC strat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiMJontuUiM Aquatic Mine Water Level Signs The water level signs in Aquatic Mine can be clipped by gliding into them with a certain facing angle and height. Often times when you clip, you’ll lose forward momentum, but with a very precise approach you can keep your speed. Climbing Clips Some objects can be clipped into by climbing at a specific angle towards them. This trick is most commonly used on the Statues in Dry Lagoon or Wild Canyon, both mission 3’s use this. It can also be done in some other areas, like the top of Security Hall. This method of clip requires that the climbable wall extend behind the object being clipped, otherwise you’ll be unable to continue climbing in that direction. DLm3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTRJvM6vstM WCm3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kupIxhH8Y - Rocket inputs Rockets have a single frame after they end where you’re in a state which can perform grounded B moves, such as kicking/punching or screw kick/spiral upper. Kicks/Punches can be used to build a small amount of speed before gliding, and screw kick/spiral upper can be used, depending on the gravity angle of the rocket, to give height, or to give a speed boost relatively upwards (which can be converted to forwards as the gravity angle resets). MHm5. MSm5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ByLFFKq3M PHm3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrzQBd-uqM Death planes inputs A similar trick can also be done on the frame you touch a death plane. You can screw kick/spiral upper, or perform a kick/punch. Downslope Conversion Abusing downslopes is the most efficient (common) way to build high amounts of speed with hunting characters. It’s done by drill diving into a floor that is obtuse relative to your gravity angle. Under normal circumstances (normal gravity) this just means something that is sloped downwards, but in the case of a wallrun (with sideways gravity), it can simply mean a another wall at a different angle, even if both walls are 90 degrees vertically. Drill diving gives -5 vertical speed, which will be partially converted to positive horizontal speed if you land on a slope relatively downward. The amount of speed converted depends in-part on the change in angle -a steeper angle is going to convert more speed. It’s important to note that it’s the relative angle of the ground to your character. Facing angle is important. You’ll want to be facing toward relatively sloped collision, which is situation specific depending on how you’re approaching this new collision triangle. Like all tricks involving landing with a drill, it can’t be done on digable surfaces when you have the digging upgrade. Wallrun specific downslope abuse A semi recent optimization with hunting characters is to take advantage of the fact that if your H+V speed is below 5 in the air, gravity will start to reset (at a rate of ______ per frame). If you’re running on a wall with 90 degree gravity, and then jump off such that it starts to reset and move towards 0 degrees, suddenly that same wall you jumped off is at a relatively obtuse angle now, meaning you can drill dive back towards it and convert -V speed upon landing into even more H speed. This has its limit, since beyond 5 speed, your gravity won’t start to reset, and the wall will remain relatively flat. (I’m pretty sure this allows you to run down a wall faster than you can fall, similar to how the building in City Escape is much faster to roll down than to fall down). Climbing Dismounts (elaborate a lot more on this) Dismounting from a wall while climbing to skew gravity is something that’s been around nearly 6 years. Found initially on accident by Nathanjuicebox aka Ptorflaxendrosis aka my current roommate in Security Hall in 2012. It was used in the Security Hall mission 3 and 5 TASes, but the mechanics behind it weren’t understood until we had better address viewing tools First wall dismount wallrun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD-dPV2HNDg SHm3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAEbJK6OOIg SHm5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-eDqJybMfs When you climb on a wall, you actually get a gravity angle as if you were standing vertically on that wall. 90 degree wall = 90 degree gravity. Jumping off a wall, or dismounting from the wall by climbing upwards instantly resets your gravity angle, but dismounting downwards doesn’t. Since you’ll have no momentum, gravity will quickly reset, but rather than taking 1 frame to reset, it resets over several frames. Building speed as it resets, by drill diving in most cases, can allow you to keep that gravity, then stick back on the wall, this time wallrunning rather than climbing. The type of dismount you get is determined by whether or not you’re climbing up or down when you reach a point that can dismount you. This point nearly always requires a ledge of some sort, or very strange situational collision. By climbing into the side of a ledge sticking out of the wall, or by climbing to the bottom of a wall where it connects to floor, you can downward dismount. If the wall ends without connecting to floor, you won’t dismount at all when reaching the bottom of it. Wall Dismount Downslope Conversion Wall dismount downslope abuse is a new trick taking advantage of recent wall dismount wallrun insights. By dismounting above a floor, you can make that floor angle relatively obtuse to your gravity angle, causing a drill dive into it to build speed the same way that normal downslope abuse works. This works on all floors without dig, and non-digable floors with dig. I’m going to be honest and say that I don’t understand how wall dismount zips work. But I have some experience with making them happen. When dismounting from a wall, you need to get caught in collision in such a way that the gravity angle doesn’t reset, if your gravity stays static once you dismount, you can hold A and initiate hover, which if you remain stuck in the collision will build speed at a rate of _._ per frame, to a limit of 2X.X. Once you break free of the collision, you’ll be reset to the universal positive speed limit of 16. If you break free by touching the floor and converting to negative horizontal speed, you can exceed 16 speed, but not for long, as running backwards isn’t very effective at maintaining momentum.